4EMartial Techniques

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Hero

Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out how the whole series of techniques, as you have formulated it here, fits into overall character construction in 4e. A lot of these are essentially feats or powers in normal 4e parlance, just recast into the mechanical framework of practices/rituals.

So, how would you envisage the way this would work in actual play? I mean, wouldn't it become pretty much REQUIRED to achieve the most useful of these practices? Since their numbers and availability are effectively unrestricted (you could use old-fashioned techniques of making it impossible to find certain ones, but that seems rather against 4e conceptually) are they not simply necessary things that players will have to add to each character?

I mean, that's the flaw with feats already, and the motivation that 5e had for making them an option you pay for with ABIs. 4e feats simply became 'feat tax' that had to be paid. To be a fighter you had to have weapon expertise, weapon talent, the feat that ups your Combat Superiority attack, some weapon proficiency feats to get the best superior weapon in your chosen weapon type path, etc. With these martial techniques you're going to want to have at least the 3 or 4 best ones, ALWAYS. Maybe that's OK, but it isn't serving any kind of goal of increasing character diversity is it?

Arcadian Knight

Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out how the whole series of techniques, as you have formulated it here, fits into overall character construction in 4e. A lot of these are essentially feats or powers in normal 4e parlance, just recast into the mechanical framework of practices/rituals.

They are almost all of them exactly magic item mechanics good sir and have costs and availability just like them. Some with more than one preparation count as more than one item combined. Something I do with magic items.

There will likely be an iron armbands of power to had in a different flavor... but the "must haves" are no more here than on the magic item lists.

I moved these to their own thread because they were based around items not rituals and so weren't much like the practices. (with only a preparation time of a minor action or two - the defense / armor types being the exception).

It does turn out a few items interact with skills in ways we do have practices doing very similar to the alternate skill use and that also makes things ambiguous however most practices take longer to perform than items do to equip and use.

For the disarming flourish technique there is an item which allows one to use strength to intimidate with all the time. (you mentioned that you were considering that effect in practices instead of swapping skills) . I think a full swap out athletics and thievery for a targeted use instead of just attributes for every use, made more sense. (guess I made it more practice like with that and then thinking we needed an assured effect even on a failure is also).

I am finding the need to differentiate things more and more annoying. I mean preparing a practice so it can be used quickly makes it into a dispensable magic item. There goes the barriers again.

Arcadian Knight

You may use your athletics or thieving for the in combat usage of intimidation. Using this technique you put on display of prowess so incredible you may even disarm your enemy and drive them into defeat

level 6, 1800 karma

Note in a world with many magic items that cling to hand or leap back to hand perhaps this ability is seen as quaint and old fashioned among the elites. (such items making one immune to the secondary effects mentioned)

Arcadian Knight

So, how would you envisage the way this would work in actual play? I mean, wouldn't it become pretty much REQUIRED to achieve the most useful of these practices? Since their numbers and availability are effectively unrestricted

Hero

They are almost all of them exactly magic item mechanics good sir and have costs and availability just like them. Some with more than one preparation count as more than one item combined. Something I do with magic items.

There will likely be an iron armbands of power to had in a different flavor... but the "must haves" are no more here than on the magic item lists.

I moved these to their own thread because they were based around items not rituals and so weren't much like the practices. (with only a preparation time of a minor action or two - the defense / armor types being the exception).

It does turn out a few items interact with skills in ways we do have practices doing very similar to the alternate skill use and that also makes things ambiguous however most practices take longer to perform than items do to equip and use.

For the disarming flourish technique there is an item which allows one to use strength to intimidate with all the time. (you mentioned that you were considering that effect in practices instead of swapping skills) . I think a full swap out athletics and thievery for a targeted use instead of just attributes for every use, made more sense. (guess I made it more practice like with that and then thinking we needed an assured effect even on a failure is also).

I am finding the need to differentiate things more and more annoying. I mean preparing a practice so it can be used quickly makes it into a dispensable magic item. There goes the barriers again.

Arcadian Knight

Something like Disarming Flourish in practice form would be like the following.
As a practice you would analyse the fighting style of the particular enemy or type of enemy you wanted to disarm and use insight, make a preparation that would allow you to pull it out and get both insight based disarm and get a form of auto success with the adversary being disarmed/proned diving/kneeling to pick it up even if the intimidation style check failed ... while it might be workable as a practice it isnt something I think would be a must have.

One significant difference between practices/rituals and items/techniques

Arcadian Knight

In the category of Ambiguity... Look at this Skill Power (admittedly it's one I made but inspired by another official one) its level 10 but of note since it does not require a bloodied target unlike the technique and is more versatile being able to move the enemy around. But if I included the auxiliary proning effect in the technique it would be very close. (In level too)

Perfected Disarm
If your Intimidate Encounter Power Fails to fully defeat your adversary, your astounding technique remains far from pointless. If your enemy is armed with a weapon or implement it is knocked to their feat - they spend an opportunity action to drop prone rearming themselves (but they are now prone) similarly an unarmored enemy is bowled over by your display and unable to respond to opportunities.

Hero

Perfected Disarm
If your Intimidate Encounter Power Fails to fully defeat your adversary, your astounding technique remains far from pointless. If your enemy is armed with a weapon or implement it is knocked to their feat - they spend an opportunity action to drop prone rearming themselves (but they are now prone) similarly an unarmored enemy is bowled over by your display and unable to respond to opportunities.

Well, THAT category is very large. The most obvious example being Dual Implement Spellcaster. Once you had that you could pick up your Staff of Ruin and get a nice damage bonus to all your attacks. Another example would be something like a spiked buckler with a weapon enchantment on it and Shield Proficiency (or a shield for that matter, though I cannot recall even one shield with a worthwhile enchantment on it).

Hero

Well, OK, but nobody took them because there were vastly better things to spend an arm slot on....

There could be some sort of edge-case for a wizard maybe? I don't know. I really literally never saw a shield in play, except once, and it was a non-optimal choice. I think it was just something the character picked up and used because nothing better was available.

Arcadian Knight

Well, OK, but nobody took them because there were vastly better things to spend an arm slot on....

There could be some sort of edge-case for a wizard maybe? I don't know. I really literally never saw a shield in play, except once, and it was a non-optimal choice. I think it was just something the character picked up and used because nothing better was available.

This could be used as a pattern for any technique allowing a different attribute to persistently be applied to all uses of any skill assuming you have a nice story reason for the effect. Perhaps the "nimble athletics" technique allows dex to be applied universally to the athletics skill. (or instinctive historian allows Con to be applied to history -hey you know the high con also allows him to study all night when the high int guy is nodding off)

However level 2 skill powers which enable swapping out of skills once per encounter I consider evidence this may actually be much too expensive. The likelihood of skills being employed large numbers of times in an encounter is fairly low so the skill power is almost as useful as the above.

Arcadian Knight

Humble Elocution
This technique is technically open to many (not just martial types) and is not actually that popular often due to personality reasons nor is it necessary that natural to most though some rogues really find it very potent (see loki). This is a self deprecating verbal technique where humility becomes an ingratiating factor it can be sincere or deceptive and may be done in blatant fashion as part of humor.

The technique confers a technique bonus equal to your rank in it for both Diplomacy and Deception skills. Additionally Daily you may choose to re-roll a Diplomacy or Deception attempt using the second even if it is lower.

the rank 1 version is available at level 3.
This technique requires 1 focus